I think this last time I was sort of so joyous about my results that I think she, she felt that, oh yes she did actually, give me some meditation to do, some relaxation meditation which was very useful. And she suggested that I did some deep breathing and just stood or, oh I was telling her that in the middle of the night my brain jumps around and I think about all sorts of things and, connected to this, and that I couldn’t settle down and I couldn’t sleep. So she suggested that I either stood or sat and imagined that the weight was going into my bottom or my feet and that all the energy was going down into the ground so therefore it would come away from my brain and that it would still my brain.

And then also she gave me a relaxation technique to imagine that you could feel a point at the top of your head and that you traced the line down your nose, under your chin, down your chest, between your legs and up your back to the top of your head again and then you go down by your ear, down your shoulder, down your arm, up under your arm, down under your legs and then round and trace it back to your other ear and to the top of your head again. And because you’d be concentrating so much you actually wouldn’t be thinking about other things. And I’ve done that and I felt that that is really helpful.

I had homoeopathy – is that how you pronounce it? – homeopathy, and I had reflexology for six months as well. And I had Reiki. I don’t know whether any of them actually helped but they made me feel better in myself! They certainly made me feel more relaxed. And my friend that came with me right at the beginning who works at a hospice, shes a trained aromatherapist, so I’ve had some massage as well. It certainly helps – it makes you feel better in yourself. Whether it actually fights the disease or not, I don’t know. But it worked for me, so.

The nurse specialist at the hospital, she was extremely good, she contacted the palliative care team, actually, while I was in the hospital and got me on loan a relaxation tape which was actually excellent. It was very good. And she was helpful for those sort of aspects of it. And yes, I benefited from that; I had that on loan for quite a while so that was good.

How does the reflexology help? Does it just help to relax you?

Yes, it’s just a lovely relaxing thing to have done. And one of the things out of all this, of course, is I’ve just sort of met some marvellously kind and dedicated people, really. And the reflexologist, shes a volunteer, a lovely lady and we just have a really nice hour together. She does the reflexology and we chat and we have the music playing and it’s just a very nice relaxing experience. Yes, I find it really nice.

I go to art therapy, art therapy is a tremendous help and we find few people sort of come forward to that. I don’t know if they’re afraid of it, they think they can’t draw or something, which is not what it’s about, but it is wonderfully releasing and relaxing, and I’ve got a huge file of work upstairs. And that’s one of things that has helped me possibly most because if I’m really uptight or if I’ve had huge doses of steroids, which sometimes has happened and I’m wired up, then the art therapy helps because I can get out the pastels or the paints and I can actually work on something and it defuses that feeling.

The other thing that made me feel really strong was I used to have acupuncture from an acupuncturist who was very clear that what he was trying to do was strengthen my own immune system to cope with the treatments. And I used to have a go of acupuncture about three days or two days before my treatment and another one 10 days after my treatment.

So for those 6 months I was having acupuncture, and he was very, very remarkable because he used to pick up things which I never told him about. For example, one day I was starting a chest infection and he said I can feel things are not too good in your lung field so I’m going to work on that today. And I’d always been very traditional medicine oriented and not much into alternative, but as a complementary therapy to what I was going through, I was seriously converted to this support while I was having my chemotherapy.

I had a little bit of sickness. But here again, you see, I remembered that we went on a boat one year, we went on a cruise and I got seasick and this woman said to me, who I met on this cruise, she said to me ‘you know what’ she said ‘if you suffer from sickness the best thing that you can take is ginger. And hence I’ve started to take a lot of ginger and I started to drink ginger and lemon. And I found that by taking ginger and drinking ginger wine on those days when I did feel sick, it did help, although a couple of times I was sick. But nothing that I couldn’t cope with, it wasn’t sort of a genuine regular thing, it was only now and again. But I did take a lot of ginger and that really, really helped. I used to buy bags of this crystallised ginger, it was great and that used to keep the, you know, the sickness away.

For a couple of years now I have been injecting mistletoe from a company in Germany. This is quite a common treatment in Europe but not so much here, and I do that 3 times a week. And I really feel since it’s now been 7 years, almost 7 years, and I’m still here and still enjoying life, that although theres been no double-blind studies it’s, something must be working.

I also have a kind of medicinal tea sent over from Canada, friends bring it over every time they come, and I drink that every day. And some kind of mushroom concoction from Japan and Noni juice from the Polynesian Islands. I also spend time meditating every day; I find that to be very important. I have a lot of music in my life but I still think that what keeps me going is the fact that I love life and I’m not ready to let go of it yet.

And then I read of a visualisation someone, I don’t remember which book, I’ve read so many, it might have been the Bernie Siegal one, I’m not sure, and at some point in a visualisation you have to, theres a chasm of some kind that you have to cross, and you have to build a bridge with whatever’s around, you have to build a bridge to cross it, you have to work out how to get across it. And I remember looking around while I was visualising, looking around, I’m a very impatient person, I’ve said that, and I decided to jump. So I jumped across it, and then you had to walk on a path that would lead you through a forest, and you had to keep following it right, if there were any left forks you didn’t take them. Well mine didn’t have one, didn’t have any forks off, it just went straight through the forest, and then you would come to a clearing where there was a hot air balloon waiting, and you’d get in there and you’d go all the way up to space so the earth was like we see the moon, you know, and you write down the things that were annoying you or whatever, and you’d screw it up and let it float in space and you’d come back down.

I did that a few times and then I found I was getting into, so I did that a few times and then I noticed that when I was jumping across this chasm every morning it was filling in, you know, like sand does, it was just, there were lips growing out of it and a little bit more every morning. And at first sight I didn’t notice it and then one day I thought ‘oh, it’s going to form a bridge, and now it’s a thick bridge, it is a really big bridge when I do it now, and I still jump across though. And I go through the forest, on occasions it’s been a jungle and thereve been flowers or animals and things but that’s, that varies from day to day, and I really don’t know why, it just, go with it.

Have you thought about or used any complementary or alternative remedies or anything like that?

I would love to say that I have, but I haven’t;

My husband was working away from home when I was diagnosed with cancer, and gave up his work to come home. Hes a teacher and he went on to be a supply teacher back here. And that meant that his, our income wasn’t steady by any means, so things like complementary therapies are expensive, an; much as I would have loved to have taken advantage of them, we just couldn’t afford to with two small children. I do sample them when I get a chance, I’ve had, I’ve had a little bit of aromatherapy, but not on a regular basis. I do appreciate the benefits of them, I did do a course of yoga that my local support group put on for a while but apart from that…